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By Root 1303 0

Lhasa train station, the ultimate terminus, is the means by which Tibet will finally become swallowed by China. Lhasa, four Chinese, one Tibetan. Shigatse, two Chinese, one Tibetan, Goba had observed. However, this is just the beginning. The new train to Lhasa, which began running in 2006, will enable hundreds of thousands more Chinese to come up high into the mountains of Tibet in pursuit of work opportunities. Clearly, the government really wanted this train. Indeed, they had spent more than $4 billion completing the project and more than 14,000 rail workers had been sent to the hospital with altitude sickness as they worked to lay the tracks. By the end of its very first year of operation, the Lhasa Express had already carried more than 1.5 million passengers into Tibet. The Chinese government regards this wonder of engineering as their gift to the Tibetans, as the train will bring opportunities, money, development, and economic progress to this poorest corner of China. They refer to themselves as a kindly benefactor generously helping the needy locals. Possibly, they even believe it. But the Tibetans don’t want this train. They just want to be left alone.

Inside the new train station, it was the familiar bedlam as we boarded. But we have assigned seats! I thought. At least some of us did. I’d learned that hard-seat class operated on a first-come, first-served basis, and as I pondered the crowds battering one another to get on board, I reflected that I too would batter people for a seat on a forty-eight-hour train journey. Fortunately, I had paid a little more than a hundred dollars for soft sleeper class, and as I found my four-person sleeper cabin, it seemed positively deluxe compared to those of the other Chinese trains I’d been on—admittedly a low bar, but still. Each bed had its own flat-screen TV. And there were oxygen-supply units for every passenger, which was thoughtful. And necessary, of course, for those traveling from the other direction, coming from the flatlands below and rolling up to nearly 16,000 feet. Bodies don’t like that. The head doesn’t like it. Nor the heart. Nor the stomach. And thus the oxygen dispensers. It was a very tight fit for four, however, and I lived in hope that I’d have the compartment to myself. Meanwhile, through the window, two Tibetans in fur hats peered into my cabin. I waved. Nothing. Apparently, the glass was reflective. I put my nose to the window. I was an Eskimo kissing a Tibetan. But there was nothing.

“Nihao.”

Damn.

A couple entered. And then another man. We would be full up for this journey across the Tibetan Plateau, a trip that would take us up to the Tanggula Pass, the highest railway pass in the world at nearly 16,000 feet, before finally descending through the arid steppes of Qinghai Province and on into the Sichuan Basin and eventually Chengdu. As we departed Lhasa, a train attendant popped in to explain the usage and mysteries of the oxygen-supply units. Outside, I watched a farmer plow his field with yaks. The sky was a deep blue and there was a full moon. I’m on Mars, I thought for the umpteenth time. But Michael Jackson’s “Heal the World” was wafting over the speakers. No, I realized, this was weirder than Mars. I searched for an off button. Surely, we, the four of us inside this small compartment, could agree that Michael Jackson’s “Heal the World” was unacceptable music for a journey over the Tibetan Plateau. I finally found the off button and switched it off, raising my eyebrows, expecting to be praised for this quick communal resolution to an irritation.

The man across from me turned it back on.

Oh, my friend, I thought. We are going to have issues.

And so to the sound of “Beat It” we rumbled across Tibet.

The new railway joined Lhasa with Golmud, a grim mining town in Qinghai Province where China sends many of its exiles and prisoners. From here, the train connects to preexisting lines that link this remote region with the rest of China. Lhasa to Golmud, however, is not a natural place to put down train tracks. There is the rugged terrain, of course.